Infected

73.

The one on his back was going to be the toughest. Perry had explored Fatty Patty’s cabinets and found a cigarette lighter, two bottles of wine, three bottles of Bacardi 151, and half a fifth of Jack Daniel’s. He’d already knocked back a whole bottle of wine; a buzz rolled thickly through his head. It wasn’t a Wild Turkey buzz, but he’d chugged the entire bottle, so the real kick was probably still brewing in his gut.

Three left: his back, his left forearm, and his balls.

For what he was about to try, he wanted to be very, very drunk.

There was no clever way to remove the Triangles, and the risk seemed greater than ever. The Triangle on his forearm might be close to the artery. The one on his back was right over his backbone-its barbed tail could be wrapped around his vertebrae. Pulling that one out might injure or even sever his spinal cord. The one on his nuts, the one he’d managed to not think about for days…well, he’d just have to get a lot drunker first.

He wasn’t certain he could pull any of them out, but he could kill them where they grew. They’d rot, sure, but if his plan worked, he would dial 911 and head straight for an emergency room. Let the doctors figure it out. The Soldiers wanted to whack him and stop the Triangles from hatching; maybe if there were no more Triangles, the Soldiers wouldn’t kill him. Maybe maybe maybe. They might kill him anyway, but they might keep him alive so they could interrogate him. Even if they took him prisoner so they could probe his mind with their secret machines and TVs that could read thoughts, he’d still be alive.

And, most important of all, he would have killed those motherfucking Triangles. Then, even if the Soldiers brought him down, no one could ever doubt that he died like a Dawsey.

He wasn’t going out as a human incubator. He wouldn’t let them win. A painful fever seemed to grip his muscles. His joints ached with the dull kick of a bass drum. The rot. The rot from his shoulder, his ass, spreading to other parts. He could fight the Triangles, maybe, but how could he fight black bile rot flowing through his blood?

The gig was up. Time to shit or get off the pot.

The sleeping hatchlings filled the apartment with clicks and pops. A Garth Brooks song filtered faintly through the floor from the apartment below. In his own mind, all was quiet, not a peep from his own Triangles.

Perry stuffed the lighter into his front pocket, grabbed the liquor bottles and his butcher’s block that held his knives and his Chicken Scissors. He hopped clumsily for the bathroom.

Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn.